The Steve Austin Show
Guest: David Clark
Release Date: September 26, 2017
Recap by: Kasey Malone
Runtime: 1:29:32
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-Broken Skull Challenge premieres on 9/26/17
Podcast Introduction
Austin greets the listeners as he does every week, and starts promoting a book he just read that also happens to be written by his guest today; David Clark. The book, Out There: The Story of Ultra Recovery, is about David’s journey with addiction and obesity; Austin says he would highly recommend this book to anyone.
He goes into a little bit about David being a long distance runner and how even though he cannot identify with the running, he can identify with the addiction story. He does clarify that he was never an addict but being in the business of Professional Wrestling, he did know a lot of people who were. He reads a quote about David and the book from Dean Karnazes. He promotes the Rich Roll Podcast episode 113, where David was a guest as well.
Austin goes on to put over David and the book more. He does let us know this podcast will be two episodes, both this current one and the Unleashed episode on Thursday. He also lets us know there is some language in this episode because he just wanted the interview to flow naturally. Austin says this is one of his favorite podcasts he has ever done. He continues to tell us a little about what the podcasts will cover and continues to praise David.
Interview with David Clark Part 1
Austin introduces David and the subject matter of the interview. They talk about their mutual friend Pat Miletich. He asks David what it is exactly that he does and David calls himself a seeker; he is out there seeking experience.
Austin brings up the book and they joke about their first interaction. He breaks down some of the research he did on David and how he connected to the subject matter. It even made Austin wonder if at one point he was a mild alcoholic.
They began discussing David’s running and how that helped him into his sobriety. David talks about his 18 months of training and weight loss. He saw running as almost like a superpower. He goes into more about his running and how he got into it.
Austin brings up the Rich Roll Podcast and Marshall Ulrich, and how the latter had his toenails removed because of the issue they were causing him while running. They go into a little bit about David’s childhood. David talks about how his father’s business venture caused something like a spiritual journey and how that made them be separated from the outside world. David’s last formal year of education was 4th or 5th grade and he eventually got a GED, with a 4.0, and went to college.
David felt that when he tried dive into education and apply himself, it was almost like re-integrating himself into society. That’s why he as so extreme with it. He says he even took the LSAT and MCAT. Austin asks him about getting into the rock ‘n’ roll scene and him playing guitar. David was trying to rebel against his upbringing and learning who he was outside his family. He speaks to how the movie The Doors made him fall in love with the Jim Morrison character and that’s who he wanted to be. He was chasing that identity and it led to his addictions.
Austin asks him about the addict’s personality and how they need to go to the extreme. David talks about how said addicts need to be on the extreme; everything is turned up to a ten. Addicts are all in or all out; that leads to people like him just doing whatever to experience life. The two continue to talk about addicts and the different types, and who David was as a person and different examples of those experiences.
Austin begins asking about David’s former marriage and when did it start to fall apart. David wasn’t really sure when, but it had been building for a long time. He says he has finished another book that talks more about his divorce. The marriage seemed to be built on lies, not ones he told her, but himself, and his sobriety made him confront those lies. It caused the marriage to fall apart. He is still friends with his ex-wife and they are now closer than before.
Austin and David talk about how one of the easiest place to drink is the airport and on planes. Austin asks him about his triggers. David says you can romanticize your addiction days and how you have to keep the bad stories at the forefront so it doesn’t feel appealing to go back. He then talks about the struggles and how it was hard to write the book. He didn’t even know if he was going to release it.
They begin talking about Marshall Ulrich and how he is Mr. Bad Water, which leads them into discussing what that race is exactly. David says it’s an invitation only race. It’s one most people will not even consider doing. He says how he got into the race because of Ulrich.
Austin praises the writing of the book. It seems like David’s previous experience with reading so much as a child may have led him to write the book at such a high level. David says it has more to do with knowing how to write his story than it had to do with any formal skills. They talk more about how he delved deeper into his addictions and how it really came to be. David then goes into the idea of surrender and that’s how he found strength to fight against his addictions and to become who he is today.
Interview with David Clark Part 2
Austin and David come back discussing Ken Clover, the creator of the Leadville 100. David says that being able to do more than what we believe we can is what lead him to doing Ultra-Marathoning. He talked about giving up on himself a lot, and how it was a change of mindset that go him to where he needed to be.
Austin asks about the types of drugs that he was using. David makes a joke about not doing cocaine but liking how it smells. He said he wanted to do anything that didn’t make him be in his own skin. He didn’t want to just be present in himself because he would keep thinking about trying to do more in his business life. He talked about how escaping the pressure and find happiness led to him doing drug and eating to fill that need. He goes on about how we try to find happiness.
Austin asks him about the first days of sobriety. David talks about it hurting and uses an illustration from the matrix. He also says it’s like learning to walk again. He told a story about how it took him like seven days to actually sleep. He moved on to talking about his AA meetings and how humbling that experience really was. AA gives you a framework for the journey of sobriety, but it really requires a spiritual awakening where you confront yourself and be honest.
Austin talks about quitting smokeless tobacco, which leads him to asking about when the cravings went away for David. The experience is different, but the pain is the same; pain is pain. David says when he stopped trying to make things easy is when it stopped being hard; you cannot take the easy way out. People e-mail him asking why they cannot find their way out of their issues, and he says life has to get as bad as it can be so we can eat the pain and have no other option to move forward.
They start discussing David’s weight. Austin clarifies that he is wanting to talk about the process of how David found his nutrition and what worked for him. David says he is a vegan. He starts talking about how he was working as a business consultant and used that mentality to figure out how he needed to improve. He was using food to make himself feel good.
David talks about how warped the world views food now and how we actually think that food looks good, but what we are wanting is how it will emotionally fulfill us. He said he started looking at the chemical effects of food and how he focused on healing his body from the effects of it. He talked about appetite and looking into how not just trigger that, but actually fulfill it and eat properly. We need willpower to overcome bad cravings. Austin asks him about the lifestyle change in light of what he discussed in the book. David said he had to change his perspective of the world and he only used food to fuel and heal himself.
David goes into how he wanted to create an identity for himself. If he made changes while looking at himself as the old him, he wouldn’t change. He had to create a new identity to make those changes. They started talking about the food changes and training changes he made in light of his new identity. They joke about David calling his early workouts high-intensity training, but intensity was relative and what he was during was high intensity. David goes into how he had to do things to the extreme. Consistency led to the results that eventually came.
Austin asks him about logging his workouts and David says he has logged every single workout since day one. He then talked about how his workouts and changes had to be a sustainable lifestyle after he reached his goal. They talk a little about how the races and things he was doing was almost like a meditative thing and were places he found enlightenment.
Podcast Closing
Austin promotes the book one more time and also promotes the Thursday episode as part two of this conversation. He gives us his thing to watch; Running on the Sun, which is a documentary of the 1999 Bad Water 135. He plugs the season premiere of Broken Skull Challenge, which premiered on 9/26/17. He then promotes his beer and knives, thanks his sponsors, and plugs the new Podcast One app. He then gives his social media handles and signs off.
Memorable Quotes:
-“What was once impossible has become very routine.” David on running marathons.
“When we commit to something, we make that sh*t happen!”
“Our greatest accomplishments in life are the things that really humble us.”
“If you’re not happy and you’re thinking it’s time for a change; the answer is yes.”
Score and Review (4/10):
This episode was a strange one. I personally had a really hard time getting into it. They felt all over the place, but the content was truly something that deserves a better structure. It’s really hard to enjoy this if you are not just extremely dedicated to the content Steve puts out. I do honestly believe that the story being told is inspiring, but at times it feels like it just drags on forever. I honestly believe this is a skippable episode.
Timestamps
00:00: Sponsor Ads
00:55: Podcast Introduction & Sponsor Ads
11:27: Interview with David Clark Part 1
47:08: Sponsor Ads
49:07: Interview with David Clark Part 2
1:24:58: Podcast Closing
About Kasey:
Kasey Malone is a lifelong wrestling fan who got introduce to the business during the Attitude Era and the Monday Night Wars. Malone started producing and co-hosting a podcast called Figure 4 Fallout in 2012 during his freshmen year of college; you can still hear Malone and his buddies discuss various topics every week live on Tuesday nights by going to inside.ucumberlands.edu/wccr or by downloading it on iTunes and various other podcast apps on Wednesday. Malone has also appeared on the WWE Network show Edge and Christian’s Show that Totally Reeks of Awesomeness; episode 7-TLC. You can reach Malone on twitter @TheKaseyMalone.
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